1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to toothbrushes, and more particularly, to the brush head for an electric toothbrush. More particularly, the invention relates to a unique arrangement of tuft bristles which are mounted on and extend upwardly from a support structure of the brush head.
2. Background Information
Electric toothbrushes consist generally of a handle containing an electric motor and a battery supply for the motor for driving a brush head mounted at the end of a tube attached to the handle. The brush head is usually moved in a rotating oscillating type motion by a drive shaft extending from the motor through the connecting tube. This moves the bristle tufts alone or in combination with flexible elastomeric strips, to provide a cleaning action to a user's teeth and gums. A considerable number of bristle tuft and elastic strip arrangements have been used on prior art brush heads, all of which are intended to provide various types of cleaning action to the teeth. Some examples of prior art bristle tuft arrangements for brush heads for electric toothbrushes are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,416,942; 5,467,495; 5,625,916; 5,652,990; 6,021,538; 6,665,901; 7,698,771; 7,934,284; 7,941,886 and 7,958,589. All of these prior art brush head bristle tuft arrangements are intended to provide some type of desired cleaning action to the teeth, many of which provide the desired sought after effect. Some of these prior art bristle tufts arrangements attempt to achieve their intended result by the various configurations of the bristle tufts as well as the type of materials together with specific heights and diameters of the bristle tufts.
The present invention provides a unique bristle tuft arrangement which is simple and economical to manufacture and which is believed to provide a quality cleaning action when used in a rotary oscillating manner on the end of an electric driven toothbrush.